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Herd-Specific Data is the Foundation

For one, Dr. Engelken explains, “Record keeping and data analysis must come into play if you are ever going to get this type of service off the ground. You can’t benchmark performance if the appropriate numbers aren’t being recorded, and that first step can be a real challenge. You have to think about what output parameters you want to evaluate and then make sure you are getting those numbers captured. Then, it becomes a question of identifying the magnitude of losses and what areas the client needs help with. Are those losses associated with cattle disease, herd management, or a combination of both?”

“Production medicine is more of a mind-set of how you do things, and the most important thing that we can do is find the weak links in the production chain,” Dr. Hilton says. “We want to find the most important factors that are hindering a farm’s success.”

In that effort, Dr. Hilton encourages veterinarians to focus on four production goals: decrease production cost; increase the value of production sold; doing both of these with less labor; and maintain or enhance animal welfare.

“I’m a fan of individual cow records,” Dr. Hilton says. “Producers are surprised how consistent individual cow production is from year to year.” With records, clients can see that a cow weaning a calf 25 percent lighter than the herd average this year will likely produce one of similar caliber next year, and the year after. Dr. Engelken points out that the records portion of cow-calf enterprises is less standardized and more challenging to ferret out than in other sectors like feedlots, stocker operations, dairy and swine.

“Your opportunities to generate production or economic numbers are really driven by specific events that occur during the annual production cycle,” Dr. Engelken explains. “These events include calving, calf processing, going to grass, weaning, pregnancy check, etc. You aren’t typically generating input/output numbers on a daily basis like producers in other animal enterprises. These events may be separated by several months (start of breeding until preg-check) or they may occur over a relatively long period of time (the calving or breeding season), which makes data collection and interpretation more difficult. Secondly, in cow-calf practice, veterinarians are often the ones collecting the data since they will be the ones on the ranch as these production events occur. This data may take the form of reproductive information, calf performance numbers, and animal health performance.”

The next step is at least as essential.

Once this data is collected, the important thing is that it is economically relevant to the operation and that it is converted into information that the practitioner and client can use to identify problems and make corrective management decisions,” Dr. Engelken says. “I believe that’s when information has economic value to the producer. This value is improved over time as economically important management changes are continually identified, documented, and benchmarked.”